Matthew Sample is a philosopher. His teaching and research intersect epistemology, ethics, and STS. Email him at matthew.sample at ircm.qc.ca

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If we cannot define science using only analysis or description, then we must rely on imagination to provide us with suitable objects of philosophical inquiry. This process links our findings to the particular ways in which we philosophers idealize scientific practice and carve out an experimental space between real world practice and thought experiments. As an example, I examine Heather Douglas’ recent work on the responsibilities of scientists and contrast her account of science with that of “technoscience,” as mobilized in nanotechnology, synthetic biology, and similar control-oriented fields. The difference between the two idealizations of science reveals that one’s preferred imaginary of science, even when inspired by real practices, has real implications for the distribution of responsibility. Douglas’ account attributes moral obligations to scientists, while a framework of “technoscience” spreads responsibility across the network of practice. I use this case to call for an ethics of imagination, in which philosophers of science hold themselves accountable for their imaginaries. We ought reflect on the idiosyncrasy of the philosophical imagination and consider how our idealizations, if widely held, would affect our fellow citizens.

(forthcoming) “Neuroethics and the Political Imagination: Modeling Public Engagement as Governance.” Abstract↓

Neuroethics, in no mere coincidence, has grown beyond an ambiguous academic topic area centered on the brain and into a robust field of its own (Vidal and Piperberg 2017). In a wave of institutional growth, it has been incorporated into the US BRAIN Initiative, the UK Human Brain Project, into international neural engineering research clusters, and elsewhere as part of this general phenomenon of “opening up science.” Many in the field have seized this opportunity for community-building, and published their own articles presenting neuroethics-specific attempts at public engagement. With this move to theoretical reflection, members of the neuroethics community join a long list of scholars providing models of engagement, from research consultations to citizen juries. But left unspoken here, in many neuroethicists' reflections on engagement, are the political stakes of such activities. What sort of society-science arrangement do we desire and how would engagement support or fulfill that hope? To this end, I critically review recent discussion of engagement fostered by neuroethics, relate these examples to theoretical work outside of neuroethics, and finally, reassert the political stakes of such activities.

Purpose: It has been proposed that rehabilitation practice should expand its aims beyond recovery to “ultrabilitation”, but only if certain biological, technological, and psychosocial conditions are met. There is thus an opportunity to connect ultrabilitation, as a concept, to adjacent literature on assistive technology and sociotechnical systems.
Method: We draw on insights from sociology of technology and responsible innovation, as well as concrete examples of neural devices and the culture of rehabilitation practice, to further refine our understanding of the conditions of possibility for ultrabilitation.
Results: “Assistive” technologies can indeed be re-imagined as “ultrabilitative”, but this shift is both psychosocial and technological in nature, such that rehabilitation professionals will likely play a key role in this shift. There is not, however, sufficient evidence to suggest whether they will support or hinder ultrabilitative uses of technology.
Conclusion: Advancing the idea and project of ultrabilitation must be grounded in a nuanced understanding of actual rehabilitation practice and the norms of broader society, which can be gained from engaging with adjacent literatures and by conducting further research on technology use in rehabilitation contexts.

Common understandings of neuroethics, i.e., of its distinctive nature, are premised on two distinct sets of claims: (1) neuroscience can change views about the nature of ethics itself and neuroethics is dedicated to reaping such an understanding of ethics; (2) neuroscience poses challenges distinct from other areas of medicine and science and neuroethics tackles those issues. Critiques have rightfully challenged both claims, stressing how the first may lead to problematic forms of reductionism while the second relies on debatable assumptions about the nature of bioethics specialization and development. Informed by philosophical pragmatism and our experience in neuroethics, we argue that these claims are ill-founded and should give way to pragmatist reconstructions. Namely, neuroscience, much like other areas of empirical research on morality, can provide useful information about the nature of morally problematic situations but it does not need to promise radical and sweeping changes to ethics based on neuroscientism. Furthermore, the rationale for the development of neuroethics as a specialized field need not to be premised on the distinctive nature of the issues it tackles or of neurotechnologies. Rather, it can espouse an understanding of neuroethics as both a scholarly and a practical endeavor dedicated to resolving a series of problematic situations raised by neurological and psychiatric conditions.

(2017) “Silent Performances: Are Repertoires Really Post-Kuhnian?” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A. (Preprint) Abstract↓

Ankeny and Leonelli (2016) propose “repertoires” as a new way to understand the stability of certain research programs as well as scientific change in general. By bringing a more complete range of social, material, and epistemic elements into one framework, they position their work as a correction for the Kuhnian impulse in philosophy of science and other areas of science studies. I argue that this “post-Kuhnian” move is not complete, and that repertoires maintain an internalist perspective. Comparison with an alternative framework, the “sociotechnical imaginaries” of Jasanoff and Kim (2015), illustrates precisely which elements of practice are externalized by Ankeny and Leonelli. Specifically, repertoires discount the role of audience, without whom the repertoires of science are unintelligible, and lack an explicit place for ethical and political imagination, which provide meaning for otherwise mechanical promotion of particular research programs. This comparison reveals, I suggest, two distinct modes of scholarship, one internalist and the other critical. While repertoires can be modified to meet the needs of critical STS scholars and to completely reject Kuhn's internalism, whether or not we do so depends on what we want our scholarship to achieve.

If we look beyond just the hypotheses, models, or evidence of technoscience, there are a variety of entangled, normative issues to be examined. Science and engineering enable the creation of new identities, change existing ways of life, and reflect collective visions for society. Accordingly, I use this dissertation to suggest how philosophy of science can address this challenge, taking the “co-production” of knowledge and social order (Jasanoff 2004) as my starting point. I argue, first, that constructivist science and technology studies, rather than precluding philosophy, lay the foundation for ethically and politically-sensitive philosophy of science. Second, I assess promising theoretical frameworks from Helen Longino, Lorraine Code, and Heather Douglas; each provides resources to evaluate technoscience, but require some changes to avoid traditional philosophical blindspots. Third, I shift to a more detailed consideration of neural engineering, as a test case for my interdisciplinary methodology. Ultimately, I propose a pragmatist conception of “good” (rather than true) technoscience, adopt a modest understanding of scholarly expertise, and call for a new philosophy of the field.